Chapter 7: Love and Lack: Media, Witches, and Normative Gender Roles

Films such as The Craft, Practical Magic, and similar productions rob female practitioners of Wicca of their own agency, replace it with a reliance on outside male forces, and discipline the women into standard patriarchal positions.

The Craft: Only after a dramatic ritual invocation of Manon do the girls gain some semblance of magical power and control (image courtesy of Columbia Pictures Corporation).

The Craft: Manon punishes disobedient Nancy with insanity and a loss of magical power (image courtesy of Columbia Pictures Corporation).

In Practical Magic, the Owens family also has a spell book. The aunts have to consult it to cast a love spell and the sisters must read it to resurrect Jimmy. Although the Owens women are able to cast some minor spells (such as stirring coffee or lighting candles) without reading them from the book, once again the real power is not in the woman but in the book (image courtesy of DiNovi Pictures).

When the sisters resurrect Jimmy in Practical Magic, they practice the words to the spell repeatedly, obsessing on reciting them correctly (image courtesy of DiNovi Pictures).

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